Jan 11, 2015

Books, Coffee and ChapStick

"Living without Reading would be living without Living."

Today I met with three of my dearest friends at a Starbucks for some book-club chatting. It's not a "Book Club" like the traditional ones. You see, it's a group of girls from different countries - okay, mostly four different Latin American countries - who basically chat about books on a closed group on Facebook. Our group is reference-only, so people can't request entrance unless one of the existing members decides to refer that person into the group. that way we all make sure that at least one of us knows the new member personally and can be responsible for them. In the beginning the group was mostly made up of Mexican girls, but as time went by, the Costa Rican share has been growing and growing until now we are the largest part of the group.

Inspite of it, and the fact that we all make a network of friends, trying to meet all together has been impossible. Some of us have met, and have made new friends - personal, real life friends - and have had the most amazing time together. Though I have never met a new friend through these few meetings we have been able to arrange, to my utter delight, I have had the opportunity of introducing some of my friends to other friends, so that now they are friends too. ^_^

Our conversations usually go around many interesting, delightful things. We share experiences about books, tell each other about what we have read and what er recommend to each other, but also talk about relationships, friends, work, travels and find the most amazing things in common, or the most curious divergencies.

In today's coffee&books, many of the girls who said would attend, didn't make it, but those of us who did had the chance to talk about travels, our experiences shopping in the U.S, (not like I have much to say about that, as my "shopping" while in Salem and Boston was reduced to books, bumperstickers, a cat-ears hat for myself and a Tardis hat for Kate, and a large cup of black and white LEGO bricks for my brother), and then ending up with Andrea also asking to tag along for our October 2016 Salem Trip. Yay! It's going to be fabulous! Must admit though, that I'm worried Carrie would be displease, as I have the feeling that she doesn't like Andrea very much. That would be so sad, because I love Carrie and I definitively love Andrea. Both of them warm my heart quite a lot.

Anyway, we were supposed to go see the new Starbucks that opened at Sabana, but there was a football match in process, so we decided to go to another Starbucks. We all like Starbucks very much ^_^. And no, we don't mind the overcharged coffee when our country produces the best coffee in the world. Personally, I like it because I always order a special. My favorite of all is the Pumpkin Spice, but that's an October specialty. Today I could choose between Gingerbread, some cupcake something and Dark Cherry. Since I already had the gingerbread one, I went for the dark cherry. Loved it!

Among our conversations we talked about someone from our group who pretty much tricked her entrance and who turned out to be the worse possible person to have in the group. She's basically a needy, irresponsible attention whore, who seeks constantly to impose on others, play the victim or flaunt her financial situation in other people's faces. Can't wait to get rid of her. It seems she has earned the dislike of many of us, so maybe it won't be hard to get her out. Boy, why is it that in every great group, at some point some pain in the ass comes to ruin the fun?

Thanks Hyne, though she had said she would come to our meeting, in the end she didn't. At least we had peace and a great time.

Among the things we discussed there was a particular subject Andrea mentioned. She had gone recently to the States where she bought herself a time-turner keychain. She's a Harry Potter fan, an completely identifies herself with Hermione. Thus the time-turner only made sense. She was so happy and so proud of it, that she shared a picture of it on our group. I saw it today, and the real thing is even more beautiful that the picture. Anyway, this annoying attention whore replied to her picture saying that she had several collectibles she had purchased from very exclusive and expensive places, and that we should make a collectible swap. We discussed this odd thing and Andrea mentioned she replied to her telling her that she didn't buy collectibles, only things she could actually put to good use. The idea made me think, because, yes, I also tend to buy things just because they are pretty, and they all end up stashed somewhere, so I thought of taking her advise for myself and start thinking about the actual use I can give to things and use them.

It's difficult sometimes to get past this, because some things are nearly "automatic" in us, but maybe if we pay attention, not only do we save money, but also can afford to concentrate better on making ourselves happy. Happiness isn't in the purchasing of things, but more in the achieving, in the living, in the realizing. Happiness attached to purchase is the happiness by possession of things, not necessarily by the "enjoying" of things. Shouldn't we favor the enjoyment, the living, the experiencing over the possession? After all, the joy, the experience lives forever in the memory and can't be taken away, while the possession can easily be lost.

However, there's another part of this "care to what we buy" thing other than my earlier diatribe on happiness, and that's being observant of what one really need. For instance, now I'm trying to cut my buying food at work and rather carry it from home. Since I'm on a diet, it's much easier to observe the processing of the food and keeping better watch over what and when I eat, rather than suddenly having to decide what do I want to eat, and hope it comes in the right portions. Now, food isn't my only "problem". Evidently, pens and pencils are also, since I have more pens and pencils that what I could use in a life time, but also - and so I found out today - chapsticks. Perhaps you remember that I've this tendency of buying lipsticks, lots of them, even though I don't really use them. About that, recently I had to throw away my whole collection because they were all expired, and I had hardly used them. Of course, this only prompted me to buy more, but those have not been used. What I do use a lot is chapsticks. I don't like it when my lips are dry, skin tensed and painful, so I try to make sure I always have one on me. When I don't, I go crazy and make sure to buy one at the first chance. As result, as I just realized, I end up with a lot of chapsticks rolling around in my bags, in my drawers, pen cases, baskets, boxes... you name it. I love them I use them, they all get used up before they expire, but do I really need to have around... six of them at all times? At least?

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Me, Me, Me. It's good to be me

Economist, student, reader, witch, monster... it depends of the eye of the beholder :-) I love everything that has to do with economics, politics, and planners, studying, organization and sometimes even a good ranting about something.